By the 1950s the mammy and background beauty evolved into several still-problematic archetypes: The studios’ solution? Give black actors solo scenes that would be cut from the film when it showed in the south.Īs Hollywood progressed, so did the types of roles black women played. The intermingling of races was heavily restricted in Hollywood movies Southern audiences would walk out of the theater or become violent. For every Hattie McDaniel, who famously said she’d rather play a maid on film than be one in real life, there was a Lena Horne, whose beauty and singing voice meant she complemented the white cast but was limited to being a lounge singer who entertained them but rarely interacted with them. The first black woman to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was Hattie McDaniel in 1940 for playing a maid named Mammy in Gone with the Wind. In the early days, roles for black women were either that of the help or the temptress. Race films were shown at “black only” theaters or segregated ones, but at certain times, usually matinee and midnight screenings. During the silent and golden age of Hollywood, films with an all-black cast were known as “race films,” not to be confused with blackface, where a white actor like Judy Garland or Fred Astaire pretended to be black in a major motion picture film.
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